


She Who Fell in Love Cried for the Universe to Hear

by Symantra



Category: BanG Dream! (Anime), BanG Dream! Girl's Band Party! (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Star Tears Disease, Angst, Background Relationships, F/F, Friends to Lovers...?, One Shot, Pining, Star Tears, Unrequited Love, tagging everything would spoil the story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-20
Updated: 2020-08-20
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:34:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26009593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Symantra/pseuds/Symantra
Summary: The star tears tell stories of love unrequited. They're said to be beautiful—iridescent, dazzling drops filled with the intricacies of the cosmos. But beautiful things can come with a great cost.Arisa is a shut-in. House plants, she can handle. People, on the other hand, are a lot more complicated. Her friends meant everything to her, and she wanted to take things step by step: learn how to speak to them, how to care for them, how to protect them. How to be herself, but most importantly her best self.But all of that went out the window the moment Tae Hanazono skipped twenty steps and fell in love with her.
Relationships: Background Toyama Kasumi/Ushigome Rimi, Ichigaya Arisa/Hanazono Tae
Comments: 13
Kudos: 36
Collections: Free Story Sundays





	She Who Fell in Love Cried for the Universe to Hear

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Umicorn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Umicorn/gifts).



Arisa would never forget the evening the stars pooled in Tae’s eyes.

The tears she shed then weren’t normal tears. They had produced a sound—an otherworldly sound. Gentle, clement chimes, like scintillant sleigh bells. But infinitely more resonant, as if the universe was whispering its secrets.

The way they had twinkled and shined made her wonder if stars had always been born in the heart and released through the eyes.

It was the first time she had seen tears of such an unusual, inconstant hue. Pale gold, like miso soup. Rich yellow, like old amber.

But whatever color they were, Arisa couldn’t shake the feeling that they seemed a few shades off. Miso was too restrained. Amber, too sociable. They were colored like something out of a book, or a daydream.

And instead of falling to earth, they levitated.

Like bubbles underwater, they rose into the air, even floating away from the awning so they could ascend unhindered.

Perhaps they sensed they weren’t of this world. Maybe there was a scientific explanation for it. Arisa couldn’t think of one. She and Tae had just stared, not saying a word to each other even after the last star had long retreated into the night sky.

She wasn’t ready for this. How could she ever be? It had only been a month since she had come out of hiding. Re-entered the real world after confining herself to a warehouse pawn shop for years.

There were so many things she was still trying to figure out. How to live her life. How to have friends. How to be honest with herself, let alone others.

For one of her friends to develop feelings for her—

Wasn’t that just too much?

* * *

“Arisa.” Tae’s voice drifted across the school courtyard, no different than any other day. “Wanna eat lunch together?”

Arisa pushed her tongue against the inside of her cheek. “Why are you asking? Don’t we always eat together?”

Tae nodded.

“I know. But I wanted to ask, just to see how it made me feel.”

“Is that so?” Arisa trailed off as Tae sat down near her. Not directly next to her, but close enough that Arisa could reach over and grab her ribbon if she wanted. “And how does it make you feel?”

“Hm. I like it!”

Arisa usually arrived first to the courtyard where her friends sat at lunch. Her classroom happened to be closest. And she didn’t have anything else to do excusing student council duties on Thursdays.

Tae usually arrived later. Ever since Arisa had known her, she went to feed the school rabbits at the start of lunch period. Only recently had she started coming earlier and checking on the rabbits at the end of lunch instead.

When Saya had questioned her about it, her explanation had simply been, _“I just like sitting with Arisa.”_

Arisa turned her eyes away from Tae and opened her lunchbox. Inside was a pleasant array of leftovers from last week’s holidays. She unwrapped her chopsticks.

“Hey Arisa.” Tae, having opened her lunchbox at exactly the same time, picked up a piece of her hamburger. “Want some of my steak?”

Arisa’s eyebrow went up. “It’s rare of you to offer that,” she commented.

“I feel like it today.” Receiving no refusal, Tae placed the piece of meat in Arisa’s lunchbox. “You don’t need to give me anything in return. If you want more, let me know.”

“Thanks, but I’d feel bad if I didn’t, so...” Arisa poked around in her lunchbox and eventually decided on a piece of an omelette rolled with some seaweed. “Here.”

Tae moved her lunchbox over to accept. “Thanks!” She ate it quickly. “Mm. It’s amazing, Arisa!”

“Actually, my grandma made it.”

Tae didn’t miss a beat. “Your grandma is amazing too!”

Arisa gave her a half-smile before looking down at her lunch again. Tae’s hamburg steak sat enticingly in the middle of her salad.

“Thank you for the food,” she stated, lifting the steak. It wasn’t a big piece, but it was the upper limit of what could be called one bite.

“So how is it?” Tae hadn’t started eating yet, but she watched Arisa with interest.

“It’s good, I guess. Er, not ‘I guess.’ It is good.”

Arisa’s approval put a wide smile on Tae’s face. “Thank goodness. I can make it for you whenever you want, by the way. We have it all the time at home.”

Arisa felt a pinch where her heart was. Every time Tae spoke to her or looked directly at her, it was like someone pushing a pin into her chest.

These were the same conversations they always had. The same expressions Tae always used. But they hit so differently now.

Arisa felt like an impersonator, a fake. Someone commended for a job they hadn’t done. Tae had told her she loved her, but not why. Not how.

“There they are!” another familiar voice exclaimed. Rimi, with Kasumi and Saya in tow, approached the two of them. Arisa acknowledged them and shifted to the side a bit.

“Hi, you two.” Saya greeted her with a wave.

Arisa started eating as the three sat down, chattering amongst each other and Tae. She tried to seem indifferent, but it was hard not to notice the way Kasumi’s eyes lingered on her and Tae. She and Rimi peeked at each other, stifling giggles.

“What’s up with you two?” Arisa grunted. They jolted upright and sat apart, as if her words had electrified them both.

“Nothing,” Rimi chirped. “We were just talking about something.”

Kasumi seconded her with an enthusiastic nod.

“Is that so...” Arisa squinted at them for a few seconds before giving up, sighing.

Their friends’ mischief didn’t even turn Tae’s head. Hardly anything embarrassed her, while for Arisa the opposite was true.

In fact, that was why everyone in their group of five already knew that Tae was interested in Arisa. She just didn’t make any effort to hide it.

Arisa ate a pickled plum off her rice. Hiding would be hard anyway, because everyone knew what the star tears meant.

Feelings of love, unrequited.

If left alone, the person who cried them would be fine, even if their love went unrequited forever. They would be able to get over their feelings and move on with life. The star tears eventually stopped on their own.

But when they did, they took things with them. Colors. Feelings. Memories. As if the universe itself meant to punish those who couldn’t help but fall in love.

Most of the theories surrounding it weren’t credible. The explanations were typically split between spiritual and scientific. For example, one theory went that color and love originated from the individual, and the world was gray by default, so the star tears symbolized how unreciprocated love could lead to someone’s sense of color leaking into the universe.

Another theorized that crying star tears exposed the eyes to such intense colors that it damaged cones in the retina, which led to acute cases of color blindness. In theory, this could also cause partial or even complete blindness. But Arisa had never heard of it happening.

Still, that didn’t keep her heart from lurching when she heard the star tears twinkling. Like now.

A tear shone in Tae’s eye, and she blinked, sending it quivering into the air.

“O-Tae...” Arisa pressed her lips together. Seeing Tae cry made her want to say something. But nothing left her lips.

What could you say to someone who loved you in a way you couldn’t understand? Don’t cry? I’m here for you?

There was no point, since she was the cause in the first place. She was the one who couldn’t return her feelings. Any things she did say would just be hollow comforters that wouldn’t help Tae the next time her feelings bubbled up as starlight.

“Ah.” Tae’s face lit up. After scarfing down the rest of her lunch, she stood up. “I’ve got it.

“I’ll be busy during lunch for the next few days.” She spoke as if delivering a practiced excuse, even though she had apparently just come up with it on the spot. “Don’t look for me, okay?”

“You make it sound so ominous,” Arisa couldn’t help but quip. Tae smiled at her.

“It’s not like that. I just don’t think you should waste your lunch period. But don’t worry, Arisa. I’ll come back for you.”

Tae walked off toward the classrooms, waving once at everybody and twice at Arisa. The others, Kasumi, Rimi, and Saya, all saw her off normally, but once she was out of earshot they giggled.

“O-Tae’s been paying special attention to you, Arisa.” Saya smiled, coy. “Has something happened between you two?”

Ignoring her friends’ curious gazes, Arisa took a bite out of her other rolled omelette. Tae hadn’t been lying. Grandma really had done a good job.

“Nah, nothing’s happened,” Arisa told them. It wasn’t technically a lie; there hadn’t been any development since the day the star tears started.

* * *

The week came and went. Tae still showed up at the beginning of lunch every day just to say hi to Arisa before zooming off to god knows where. School passed uneventfully as a whole.

Band practice played out the same as always as well. Poppin’Party met up and played like normal. Occasionally, Tae would shoot her funny looks or wink at her, but that was it.

Sometimes Tae would come with her rabbits (one or two or three of them, at least). If Arisa let her—and she felt too guilty to ever turn her away—they would sit together in the yard after practice and let Tae’s rabbits roam around.

Arisa didn’t dislike Tae. If anything, being around her meant she could relax. Of the band’s two guitarists, Tae was less likely to start a fire. She was easygoing. And on top of all that, she just didn’t really judge.

She didn’t judge Arisa. She didn’t judge Kasumi—well, she did at first. She didn’t judge Rimi or Saya or Chisato or anyone else. Tae just accepted everything as is.

Arisa wasn’t anything like that. Short-tempered, sometimes foul, more often than not unmotivated, and undeniably a homebody—those were her traits.

She wasn’t foolish enough to believe she could have a functional relationship. At least not with someone like Tae, who was her opposite in a dozen ways. Being a friend was one thing, but being in a relationship? Arisa would only hurt her.

Oddie, Tae’s “boyfriend,” shuffled up to the wooden step. Arisa lifted him onto the veranda, where he sat wrinkling his nose for a while.

“What’s it like?” she mumbled, petting him across the back. Of course, he didn’t respond. “Must be easy, since you’re a rabbit.”

After another minute, he scuttled away from her touch and peeked over the edge of the veranda. Arisa let him down and watched him bound toward the small pond where the other rabbits were. She put her hand on her knee and let out a sigh.

* * *

On Friday, Tae showed up without her rabbits. Instead, she had her guitar.

Arisa stood at her bedroom window on the second story. Her hair was down and still damp from when she had gotten out of the bath. As slight as it was, the breeze felt especially cool against her neck.

On the ground below, Tae opened her guitar case and started making some adjustments. She had been waiting by the gate when Arisa got back to her room. Somehow, she had known when to call her name to get her to come to the window. Her hearing must have been like a rabbit’s, too.

When Arisa told Tae she would be down in a few minutes, Tae told her to stay up there. _“It’s more romantic this way,”_ she claimed.

Arisa propped her elbows up on the windowsill and leaned out, exhaling everything she had in her lungs. Tae said things like that so easily. Every time she did, it left Arisa with a lump in her throat. What was she supposed to say? How was she supposed to say it?

A reverberant twang pulled her back to the present. Tae straightened up. She addressed her audience of one with a smile.

“Good evening. This is a special song that I’ve been writing. I don’t have a name for it, but I’ve been calling it ‘Bloom.’”

Tae gripped the neck of her guitar and rested her fingers on the strings. For a moment, she held that position. Then, she began to play.

The melody was slow, steadfast. Like water without ripples. Arisa took a step back and leaned further out the window so she could hear it better.

Tae sang in a lax and lilting voice, one that wasn’t very different from how she talked normally. It traveled across the street and bounced back, never overpowered by her guitar.

The words were naggingly homespun—a lyric about a flower, the seasons weighing on its petals. One about the moon’s place in the sky and how it sometimes forgot to hide itself in the day.

A bunch about love, in an abstract Tae kind of way.

Her hands moved smoothly over the strings. Their pattern changed every now and then; sometimes the verse would seem like it was about to end, but then Tae would play a part she had already played, then she would do something else.

Sometimes, the lyrics would trail away, and her guitar would make up for the absence of her voice. Arisa caught on to what she was doing.

Next time Tae started to improvise, Arisa could tell immediately. The last note of her voice trailed away, and she focused on her guitar. All her heart would go into playing chords. She was still taking it easy, but not at all lightly.

Even when she wasn’t completely sure, she kept going. She made it up as she went along. Something Arisa could never really do, because when she wasn’t sure about something, all she knew how to do was shut down.

Arisa closed her eyes and listened to the melody. It lingered in her ears as if Tae were speaking with actual words. It worked its way into her chest and squeezed her heart like gauze.

The song’s final note seeped into the air.

Tae looked up at Arisa’s window for the first time since she had started to play. Her eyes were awash with sparkling tears. They broke away, hovering upward to Arisa’s level and beyond into the darkening sky. They mingled and split, ringing softly, like a shower of yellow stones.

“How was it?” Tae’s voice, full just a moment ago, barely reached the window now. It was so much easier to meet her eyes when she stood so far away.

“It was a good song,” Arisa answered. She wasn’t lying.

“Do you...” Tae trailed away. “Feel different about me?”

Arisa opened her mouth. Did she? She wanted to say she did. She wanted so badly to say she had been swept away. That the song had cured her anxieties, her hesitations, her depression. That she could climb out the window and gently descend into Tae’s arms like a fairytale princess. That she could wholeheartedly, unregrettingly be with her.

She was definitely touched. The song, and Tae coming all the way out here to perform it for her, touched her. But something still tugged her back. Some restraint, some inhibition stopped her from going down there.

“I don’t know yet,” she whispered. Arisa’s heart, throat, and eyes all threatened to close up on her. “I don’t know. I’m so sorry.”

Tae must have felt her hesitation. Her voice echoed off the buildings and reached her again.

“Just one date,” she pledged. “Please. It doesn’t have to be now. We can wait until next weekend. I promise—I’ll help you understand.”

Arisa looked down. Tae stared up at her, expression serious, mouth set in a determined line. Her eyes glistened.

It wasn’t fair of her to keep Tae hanging like this. She had to go on at least one date. See if something changed.

Though her neck felt like it had been rusted rigid, Arisa eventually managed to nod.

“Okay. Next week.”

She had to go, for Tae’s sake. For her own sake.

* * *

The week passed. Again, it was altogether uneventful. Arisa’s thoughts were constantly of the weekend. She still had a week to change her mind. She could back out, make up some excuse.

But the star tears wouldn’t wait. Her mind kept going back to their brilliant color, their otherworldly sounds, and all the theories she had read.

Tae continued to sit with her at lunch, but she was quieter than she had been last week. Maybe all of Arisa’s hesitancy and the progress she wasn’t making was finally starting to give her pause.

Guilt hung over Arisa like a rainy cloud.

* * *

Thursday, a busy day at school left Arisa too tired to hang out at Rimi’s place with the rest of her group like usual.

Her meeting with the student council had dragged on for an extra exhausting hour as Sayo and Rinko reviewed the entire disciplinary policy because some students were complaining about it being too strict. It had been left up to Arisa to handle a large stack of paperwork the size of a small stack of paperwork.

Afterward, she went straight home and collapsed onto a cushion, turned on the TV, and let the hours tick by. Her phone dinged several times from a flurry of school emails. Having no interest in school for the time being, she silenced it.

A few hours later, her grandmother drew a bath for her, so she jumped in and soaked. Sighing, she rested her head on the edge of the tub and watched the steam rising from the surface of the water.

If only she could see in herself what Tae saw in her. Maybe then she’d have less reservations about all of this.

She spent an extra long time in the bath before getting out, dressing herself, and springing into bed with her phone. Tonight felt like a good night to watch relaxing videos until she fell asleep.

She had missed a call, and a few text notifications, so she checked those first.

_Tae: arisa are you there (11:31 pm)_

_Tae: are you busy? (11:34 pm)_

_\- Missed call from_ Tae _(11:36 pm) -_

_Tae: i need to hear your voice (11:48 pm)_

_Tae: just for a bit (11:48 pm)_

_Tae: wwsa,, please (11:59 pm)_

As she read and reread Tae’s texts, her pulse quickened. Tae rarely texted her, and she had never sounded this desperate before.

Clumsily, Arisa pulled up the keyboard.

_Arisa: Tae? Are you okay? (12:12 am)_

Not even waiting for a reply, she called. She held it up to her ear as it buzzed. Two times. Three. Four. She bit her lip, stopping when she tasted blood.

“Tae Hanazono. Leave a message and I’ll listen to it later.” The cheerfulness of Tae’s voicemail was sorely anachronistic. Arisa hung up and tried again.

“Tae Hanazono. Leave a mess—”

Arisa ended the call. Her hands shook.

Not knowing what to do next, she stared at her contacts list until she noticed the word “Yamabuki.”

“Saya?” Her mouth started running as soon as the phone picked up. “Have you heard from O-Tae?”

“Huh?” Saya sounded a little sleepy, as if she had just been starting to doze off. “No, not since lunch. What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know.” Arisa sucked in a breath. “Just—if you do hear from her tonight, call me, alright?”

“Alright,” Saya agreed after a moment. Despite the time, she sounded kind and empathetic. She didn’t pry, didn’t doubt. Arisa felt bad for bothering her. “You take care of yourself too, Arisa. Get some sleep, okay? You can’t keep driving yourself into the ground, got that?”

Arisa licked the blister she had just made on her lip. “Okay. I will. Thanks.”

The call ended. Arisa let her hand fall to the bed.

What in the world was going on? Was Tae going to be okay? Was it related to the star tears?

For a while, Arisa stared at her phone’s black screen, praying it would light up with a notification from Saya or Tae herself. Using it for anything else tonight seemed out of the question. The reason she was even in this situation was her own lack of diligence.

After or so twenty minutes of untreated apprehension, she heard her grandmother walking down the hallway to her bedroom. Arisa got up to turn off her lights and stumbled back into bed. Her phone still hadn’t gone off. She set it next to her pillow and turned the notification volume up to max. This time—if there was a “this time”—she wouldn’t miss it.

She burrowed beneath the covers to wait for whichever would come first: the sound of a text coming in or the nothingness of sleep.

In the end, sleep came for her first.

* * *

The day after, Tae didn’t come to lunch. While Kasumi and Rimi didn’t seem to take much notice, Saya shot Arisa a worried look that echoed Arisa’s own thoughts.

“I’ll be right back.” Excusing herself, she left her lunch where she had been sitting. “Uh, you guys can have my lunch if you want. I’m not that hungry today.”

“Yay!” Kasumi immediately reached in with a pair of chopsticks. Saya hit her with a withering look and gave Arisa a respectful nod.

“Good luck,” was all she needed to say.

Arisa headed into the school’s main building and ascended the stairs to Tae’s classroom. A peek through the window told her it was empty, but she opened the door and poked her head in to confirm. Aya and Eve heard her coming in and separated sheepishly, having been hidden away in the blind spot of the windows. Arisa closed the door and left them alone.

Her second guess was the rabbit hutch, and it was right. Tae squatted inside the enclosure next to her backpack. A beige-colored rabbit poked around inside of it. She studied the cover of a notebook, not noticing Arisa approach the wire mesh door.

“Tae,” Arisa called out to her. “I’m coming in.”

“Oh. Arisa.” Tae looked back over her shoulder. “Ah, your eyes—” She made to say something then stopped. Arisa gave her a questioning look.

“Huh?”

“Nothing.” Tae shook her head. Arisa fumbled with the latch for a few seconds before walking over and squatting down with her.

“Listen, Tae. About those texts.” It took her a minute to explain herself. She omitted the part about calling Saya, or how she had stared at the ceiling for an hour afterward; Tae didn’t need to know about that. “I’m sorry for replying late. You never responded, so I wanted to ask if you were alright... you know?”

A rabbit hopped closer to them. Tae gently picked it up and set it in her lap, patting it until it waggled its feet wanting to be let down.

“I was going through it. I dunno.” Tae watched the rabbit prance away. “Everything was fine right before that. I was just lying in bed when all of a sudden, I felt like I really wanted to talk to you. And it didn’t go away for a while. I kept thinking about you until I started crying. It got worse and worse, but after a little bit, it just stopped.”

“You cried, like... star tears?”

Tae bobbed her head. “A lot of them. They floated toward my window, which was closed. So I opened it for them. Letting them go made me feel better, but I was a little sad too.

“Say, can you tell me something?” Tae held out her cultural studies notebook for Arisa to see. It had a sticker on the corner. “What do you see?”

“Huh? It’s your notebook.” Arisa creased her brow. “Are you alright? Did you not get enough sleep last night?”

“Hm? I slept, yeah. But what I meant is, what color do you see?”

“Uh...” Arisa looked at the notebook. “Violet?”

Tae nodded and reached into her bag. The curious rabbit that was in there jerked its head out and skipped away. “What about this?” she asked, pulling out her science textbook and pointing at a flower on the cover.

“It’s also violet.”

Tae put the book down and reached into her bag again, this time pulling out her pencil case. “What about this?” She picked out a gel pen and held it up to Arisa’s face like a test tube.

“Gray. Or silver.”

“And this?” This time, she held up a gluestick. Arisa stared at her, bewildered.

“The cap is purple, and the rest of it is white. It’s got some pinkish letters on the side of it. Geezus Tae, what’s wrong with... you...”

Oh.

_Damn._

Blast everything to hell, and herself with it.

Tae stared at the cap of the gluestick. “I can’t see it.”

“You can’t... what?” Arisa knew exactly what Tae was getting at. She just didn’t want to accept it.

“I can’t see anything purple. It’s all just gray.”

* * *

Tae’s ability to see purple never returned. When the others asked her what it was like, she only had one answer.

“ _Like all the purple just leaked out of everything.”_

In all honesty, Tae took it better than Arisa. And she was the one who had actually been affected, too. Arisa hadn’t been able to meet her eyes for a week. Not when her eye color was just a reminder of what Tae had lost.

Just another reason Arisa didn’t deserve to look at her. She was responsible for this. All because she had wanted to hem and haw for another week. All because she couldn’t fall in love.

That day, when she found out Tae couldn’t see purple, Arisa had also asked her about the date.

Tae had thought for a moment, shrugged, and turned the question on her. _“I dunno. Do you want to?”_

It had left Arisa hesitating. _“Well... if you’d like to, I’m still willing to go.”_

“ _Oh. It’s okay.”_ Tae’s next words had cut the deepest out of anything else up to that point. _“I don’t think it matters anymore.”_

She hadn’t said it in a mean way. But it was the matter of factness that stung. The fact that it was true made her ache. The fact that it probably wouldn’t ever matter again left a bruise that didn’t want to heal.

Tae’s behavior returned to normal. But every time she looked at Arisa, a distant look entered her eye. A glint, or a flash of memory, as if something she had forgotten was about to surface.

But every time, she came to, shook her head, and looked away.

Arisa found herself praying. _“Keep going,”_ she would urge inwardly, holding Tae’s eyes for as long as she could. _“Do you see it? Are my eyes purple again?”_

Every time, Tae’s eyes clouded, and she looked away. Arisa’s hopes would plummet.

Why was she even trying? Was it so Tae could have all the joys of color? Was it because she missed the longing looks and the special attention?

Was she just looking to see if there was still a spark there for her to warm her hands on?

Months passed. Kasumi and Rimi’s furtive giggles with each other turned into shy looks and eventually brazen hand holding. Poppin’Party put on its own self-sponsored live show. Raise A Suilen entered the scene, and with it, Rei Wakana—Tae's childhood friend.

Eventually, those two got together. It surprised no one. There was nothing unrequited about it. Just two people that had spent years thinking about each other, waiting for the day they could fulfill a childhood promise, now going out with each other.

“Pardon the intrusion.” Rei peeked into the basement, kneeling by the open trapdoor. It was becoming a regular sight nowadays. “Is Hana-chan here?”

“Rei!” Shouldering her guitar case, Tae rose from Arisa’s old couch. “My ride is here. I’ll see you guys later.”

“Off someplace today?” Saya waved as Tae walked up the stairs.

“Yup. The shopping street over in Taito. Do you want souvenirs?”

“Nah, don’t bother yourself. Just have fun, you hear?”

Tae stopped by the top of the stairs and gave her a thumbs up. Rei kissed her on the cheek because she was taking too long.

The last they saw of Rei was her teal nail polish as she pulled Tae up the stairs. And then Tae was gone too.

They seemed like a great couple. Rei didn’t get fazed at all by Tae’s airheaded personality. Tae’s smile always widened when Rei showed up. They went on dates, got along in good times, and made up after bad times.bu

When Tae looked at Rei, she got a special look in her eye. It was the same one Arisa had known for a week before it vanished, taken away by the stars.

Taken away because she wasn’t worthy of it, and she hadn’t been worthy in the first place. If only she had—

She stopped herself. Who was she kidding? Pretending there was a chance things could have worked out? Now she was just being selfish.

That look shouldn’t have ever been for her at all.

“Arisa!”

Realizing she had zoned out staring at the trapdoor, she shot Kasumi a shame-faced look.

“O-oh, don’t mind me. I was just spacing out, haha—”

“No, Arisa... Your eyes.”

“My eyes? What do you...” Arisa lifted her hand to her face, and that was when she heard it. A faint, ethereal twinkling.

Her fingers traveled up her cheek to her eyes, where she dislodged something wet and cold as ice.

Teardrops.

She blinked, and more spilled from her eyes. The sensation as they touched her face made her gasp. It was so frigid, so strange, that she cupped her cheek just because she needed to feel the warmth of a hand.

Arisa stared at the spatter of tears before her. The droplets hung suspended in the air like the stars in space. Contained within them was a pulsating green glow, as if a star existed inside each one.

After a long held breath, they hovered away toward the top of the stairs, out through the half-open warehouse doors, and up into the rest of the universe.


End file.
